Aratus and the Astronomical Tradition

Emma Gee

Aratus and the Astronomical Tradition

Emma Gee

Description

Why were the stars so important in Rome? Their literary presence far outweighs their role as a time-reckoning device, which was, in any case, superseded by the synchronization of the civil and solar years under Julius Caesar. One answer is tied to their usefulness in symbolizing a universe built on "intelligent design." From Plato's time onwards, the stars are most often seen in literature as evidence for a divine plan in the layout and maintenance of the cosmos. Moreover, particularly in the Roman world, divine and human governance came to be linked, one striking manifestation of this being the predicted enjoyment of a celestial afterlife by emperors. Aratus' Phaenomena, a didactic poem in Greek hexameters, composed c. 270 BC, which describes the layout of the heavens and their effect on the lives of men, was an ideal text in expressing such relationships: a didactic model which was both accessible and elegant, and which combined the stars with notions of divine and human order. Across a period extending from the late Roman Republic and early Empire until the age of Christian humanism, the impact of this poem on the literary environment is apparently out of all proportion to its relatively modest size and the obscurity of its subject matter. It was translated into Latin many times between the first century BC and the Renaissance, and carried lasting influence outside its immediate genre.

Aratus and the Astronomical Tradition answers the question of Aratus' popularity by looking at the poem in the light of Western cosmology. It argues that the Phaenomena is the ideal vehicle for the integration of astronomical "data" into abstract cosmology, a defining feature of the Western tradition. This book embeds Aratus' text into a close network of textual interactions, beginning with the text itself and ending in the sixteenth century, with Copernicus. All conversations between the text and its successors experiment in some way with the balance between cosmology and information. The text was not an inert objet d'art, but a dynamic entity which took on colors often in conflict in the ongoing debate about the place and role of the stars in the world. With this detailed treatment of Aratus' poem and its reception, Emma Gee resituates a peculiar literary work within its successive cultural contexts and provides a benchmark for further research.

Aratus and the Astronomical Tradition

Emma Gee

Author Information

Aratus and the Astronomical Tradition

Emma Gee

Reviews and Awards

"...Gee's Aratus and the Astronomical Tradition fills a considerable gap by detailing dynamic ways in which the Phaenomena was put to use in ancient intellectual traditions. ...Aratus and the Astronomical Tradition is a fruitful read for any scholar of Aratus and the rich traditions surrounding his lodestar poem." --Aestimatio: Critical Reviews in the History of Science

"Emma Gee's learned, authoritative and lucid book gives us a new understanding of the historical importance of the Hellenistic poet, Aratus. Aratus' learned poem on the night sky was read and translated and argued over from the third century BC up to the era of Copernicus. Until now the poem's popularity has been simply baffling, but Gee's crisp and witty arguments explain not just why Aratus was popular but why he mattered. As a template for how to fuse astronomical data with an imaginative vision of an ordered cosmos, Aratus was never out of fashion, whether providing a model for Stoic providence or being deconstructed by the atomist Lucretius. At last, thanks to Gee, we can start to understand where Aratus belongs in the scientific tradition of the West." --Denis Feeney, Princeton University

"By delving into the astronomical, mythological and cosmological writings of both earlier and contemporary authors, [author Emma Gee] provides new insights and deeper meaning for the established scholarship on the complicated Aratean tradition. ... The newest scholarly study of the Aratean tradition provides a significant addition to the published literature." --Sun News Miami

"Gee's book is impressive both for the breadth of literature it surveys and for the careful, oftentimes quite subtle, conclusions drawn from that materials." -The Classical Review